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Co-Chairs of the Tokyo Donors Conference Call for Full Implementation of the CFA

And continue to label the LTTE as a 'terrorist' organization

Comments, TamilNation.org, November 21, 2006

"We believe that the Tamil Tigers, the LTTE, is a terrorist group responsible for massive bloodshed in the country and we hold the Tamil Tigers responsible for much of what has gone wrong in the country. We are not neutral in this respect. " -- US Under Secretary Burns

Comment in tamilnation.org 

To use the words of Richard Swift, New Internationalist, in Mind Games, in July 1999 the public relations technique adopted by the Co-chairs of the Tokyo

Donors Conference is simple enough: minimise the human rights abuses of the Sri Lanka government, and then talk about it as a 'complex' two sided story, and play up efforts at reform. The questions asked by the Press Trust of India  at  the Press Conference afforded US Under Secretary Burns an opportunity to clarify the US position in relation to the conflict in the island. The questions were pointed -

1. Sir, there has been a lot of writing in the media that there is somehow two different tracks of U.S. policy towards this conflict in Sri Lanka. The hard line espoused by Mr. Burns supposedly is for allowing military offensives for the state of Sri Lanka to preserve the territorial integrity. And supposedly there is a softer line that is pushing for the homeland, you know, of the Sri Lankan Tamils. Can you please clarify for the record what it is that the U.S. is pushing there now in Sri Lanka?  and

2. What military assistance does the United States provide to the Government of Sri Lanka and whether any of the arms have been used by the government troops in alleged atrocities?

But, regretfully ( though, perhaps, understandably),  US Under Secretary Burns avoided the opportunity afforded to him to give some direct and forthright answers. The questions by PTI served to focus attention on the unstated geo-political interests of the 'international community' in the Indian Ocean region and in particular the uneasy power balance that must be assessed in the light of  the

"...two geopolitical triangles juxtaposing on the Indian Ocean's background: U.S.-India-China relations and China-Pakistan-India relations. In this complicated geopolitical configuration, New Delhi is not simply a partner of China or the United States: India is emerging as a major power that follows its own grand strategy in order to enhance its power and interests..." India's Project Seabird and the Indian Ocean's Balance of Power - PINR, 2005

The view of the Tamil Guardian that  Sri Lanka's strategy of terror has international backing continues to merit our attention.  And of  those in the international community who are engaged in 'playing up efforts at reform' and speak of their willingness to recognise the 'legitimate aspirations' of the Tamil people (but who refrain from spelling out what in their view is 'legitimate') may we also ask a pointed question.  Do they disagree with that which  Gandhian leader S.J.V.Chelvanayagam declared 32 years ago

"Throughout the ages the Sinhalese and Tamils in the country lived as distinct sovereign people till they were brought under foreign domination. It should be remembered that the Tamils were in the vanguard of the struggle for independence in the full confidence that they also will regain their freedom. We have for the last 25 years made every effort to secure our political rights on the basis of equality with the Sinhalese in a united Ceylon. It is a regrettable fact that successive Sinhalese governments have used the power that flows from independence to deny us our fundamental rights and reduce us to the position of a subject people. These governments have been able to do so only by using against the Tamils the sovereignty common to the Sinhalese and the Tamils.  I wish to announce to my people and to the country that I consider the verdict at this election as a mandate that the Tamil Eelam nation should exercise the sovereignty already vested in the Tamil people and become free."

Does the international community take the view that Gandhian leader S.J.V. Chelvanayagam was wrong and that the aspiration of the people of Tamil Eelam to be free from alien Sinhala rule is not a 'legitimate' aspiration? If the latter be the case, has not the time come for the international community to explain to the people of Tamil Eelam its reasons for insisting that the Tamil people be ruled by a permanent Sinhala majority within the confines of a single state? The international community  may ban the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, but they cannot ban the cry of a people for freedom from alien rule.

And here let us be clear. The struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam to be free from alien Sinhala rule is not about what the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam may have done or may not have done. The armed resistance of the people of Tamil Eelam (warts and all)  arose as the inevitable response to decades of efforts by successive Sinhala governments to conquer and assimilate the Tamil people and the enactment of the 6th Amendment to the Sri Lanka constitution set the seal by criminalising all non violent means of struggle for an independent Tamil Eelam state. And today, the words of Mamamanithar Sivaram in 2003 have a continuing relevance -

"...America may be the mightiest nation on the earth today but that cannot detract an iota from our right to live with honour, dignity and freedom in the land of our forebearers. It cannot for a moment make us give up an inch of our lands to help India or the US Bloc stabilise the Sri Lankan state for the sole purpose of furthering their strategic and economic interests..."

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